libsecp256k1 v0.4.1 Released

• "This release slightly increases the speed of the ECDH operation and significantly enhances the performance of many library functions when using the default configuration on x86_64."

What's changed

• The point multiplication algorithm used for ECDH operations (module ecdh) was replaced with a slightly faster one.
• Optional handwritten x86_64 assembly for field operations was removed because modern C compilers are able to output more efficient assembly. This change results in a significant speedup of some library functions when handwritten x86_64 assembly is enabled (--with-asm=x86_64 in GNU Autotools, -DSECP256K1_ASM=x86_64 in CMake), which is the default on x86_64. Benchmarks with GCC 10.5.0 show a 10% speedup for secp256k1_ecdsa_verify and secp256k1_schnorrsig_verify.

ABI Compatibility

The ABI is backward compatible with versions 0.4.0 and 0.3.x.

GitHub Repo